My mom had always made arrangements
for family portraits each year – not that big of a deal when we were living at
home. But after my first brother got
married and started having children of his own, and mom’s grown children all
had jobs – the portrait scheduling thing became more of a challenge while trying to work
it around everybody’s personal schedule.
It’s funny – because I don’t recall
any family photos with mom or dad’s siblings and their posterity – though we
attempted at least a few times on my dad’s side. I think there are at least two photographs –
but I have no idea whose possession they ended up being in. I haven’t actually seen them since the years
they were taken.
I don’t know when it was that I took
over the scheduling of trying to get everybody at the same location at the same
time. Not that I did a terribly great
job. The last time that we did a family
picture with my sibs and our posterity was a week before Jenna turned one.
I used to keep the photo by the door
of our old house. Everytime Bill (my
brother-in-law/photographer that I mention here) would say that we were long overdue for an updated
portrait. Well yeah.
That’s just my side of the
family. Six weeks after the family photo
with my sibs and posterity, we went back east to see Roland’s brother get
married. Roland and all three sisters
were there, and we did get a shot of mom and her five children – but that was
the extent of it. We hadn’t tried posing
the entire family clan – not that the entire clan was present.
We did get pictures of a bunch of us
when we went to Tucson for his mother’s birthday mentioned in this post but
still not the entire gang was there. I
haven’t actually met all of his family.
Most
of the family photos we have are of my family.
They are the ones in all the wedding photos and any additional family
portraits we may have taken.
The last intermediate family picture
we had taken was when Jenna was four. It
was taken less than a week before Tony left for Brazil. The following year Randy left for Portugal. And now I have a nephew serving in Canada
(all LDS missions by the way)
So this week I have all three of the boys in Utah and
still found myself working around schedules in order to get some pictures done
and asked Bill if
he’d be able to take family pictures this morning before my first granddaughter
(first grandchild) was blessed. We were
still missing three from my extended family.
My nephew (though his family had a large cut out of Mitt Romney with my
nephew’s face glued over Mitt’s), my brother Corey and his spouse. (Wish I would have thought of getting cut outs
for them).
I realized that not only is it harder
to schedule, but to actually position everybody and keep them laughing though
the position is causing them pain or the baby is getting heavy or running out
of shot or what have you. I am so
grateful for my brother-in-law’s willingness to take the time to take our
photos – unfortunately he was not in many of them because of trying to get the
perfect expressions from our rather large group. There were eighteen of us plus
the cut out plus the two that may be photo shopped in with us. That would be awesome.
That’s still not as large as mom’sneighbors (our second family) who have
roughly 35 individuals to work with.
That’s a lot of people. A lot
more schedules to work around. I don’t
know how long it’s been since their last family portrait. I don’t think they actually are able to get
their entire clan together each year – but I could be wrong.
I’m grateful to be able to preserve memories
through photographs and for the love and support my family has shown one
another and working with me to make it possible. Thank you all. And thank you Bill!
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